After I Returned The Ring

After seven years of secretly dating Ross Stockdale, I found a proposal folder hidden in his study. Inside were a seaside dinner plan, a fireworks schedule, and a handwritten vow card. I nearly cried from happiness. I thought Ross was finally going to bring me into the open and give me a home. But on our seventh anniversary, I saw a short video posted by Samora Leone. In the video, the Leone family’s private marina was lit like daylight. Fireworks burst over the water while Samora stood before the family representatives with her arm linked through Ross’s. The caption read: Thank you for loving me all these years. I said yes. The man in the video was Ross. His hand rested on Samora’s waist, and on his finger was the matching silver ring I had designed for him years ago. Everyone believed Samora was the long-lost daughter of the Leone family. They were wrong. The real Leone heir was me.

At a mafia family banquet, my boyfriend of five years, Emilio Gimondi, gives away the ring that symbolizes the family's Donna to his childhood friend, Carlotta Lecce. Someone asks in astonishment, "You gave the ring to Carlotta? Isn't Ms. Rinaldi going to be angry?" Emilio looks completely unconcerned. "A proposal is just a formality. Zita is going to be the Donna eventually. She doesn't need to throw a tantrum over a ring." Carlotta makes a point of flashing the ring in front of me. "Zita, isn't it pretty?" Emilio thinks I'll react the way I always have—in anger and jealousy. Instead, I simply watch them quietly and say that it does indeed look nice. He relaxes, thinking that I've finally learned my place. He promises that once we marry, he'll make it up to me with something much better than that ring. But what he doesn't know is that I've already been accepted into medical school. Very soon, I'll be gone.

I married him when he couldn’t even open his eyes. Four years I sat beside Evanthe Blackwood’s bed. Keeping him alive while his family held their breath. The marriage was a contract. A legal arrangement. Nothing more. Nobody warned me that four years of silence could break a person open. Nobody told me that loving a man who couldn’t reject you was the most dangerous kind of loving there was. Then he woke up. He looked at me like I was a stranger who had broken into his house. To Evanthe I was an opportunist. A woman who had married a helpless billionaire for his name and his money. He decided who I was in the first five minutes and nothing I did was ever going to change that. He kept me anyway. For the heir clause. For the contract. Never for me. I should have left then. Instead I stayed and I hoped and I let myself believe that maybe underneath all that coldness something real was trying to get out. Then Sena came back. His first love. And I watched him look at her the way he had never once looked at me. So I left. No tears. No confrontation. Just his ring on the desk and my signature on the divorce papers. What he didn’t know was that I didn’t leave alone. Now he’s found me. Three years later. Standing at my door with regret all over his face and my daughter’s eyes staring back at him. But is sorry ever really enough?

The richest man in the country, Sebastian Vance, has a ring custom-made to my exact measurements, worth billions of dollars, for the woman who will be his bride. In the first life, my stepsister, Mia Lowe, slips on the ring and marries him. Sebastian claws her face, shouting, "She's not the one!" In the second life, my other stepsister, Lorraine Lowe, loses 30 pounds before marrying him. He shoves her down the stairs anyway and says, "She's not the one either." In the third life, my stepmother, Vivian Cole, grits her teeth and slices off a piece of her own flesh just to force the ring onto her finger. Sebastian sneers and pushes her under the bathwater, holding her down until her body goes limp. By the fourth life, out of options and terrified, they finally send me. I slide the ring on, and it fits perfectly. My entire family lets out a sigh of relief. But the second Sebastian lays his eyes on me, he draws a knife and stabs me to death. "Why is it still not her? Where is she?" In the last life, he has his assistant, Owen Hayes, deliver a ring to us. All four of us insist that it won't fit. Owen shoots us a strange look. "Mr. Vance said the rightful owner of this ring is among you."

After designing a one-of-a-kind suit, Lynette Gibson declares online, "This suit is not for sale. It's a gift to the man I love the most." She tells me she'll give it to me on the day we get engaged. That day finally comes along, but she doesn't show up at our engagement party. Instead, she gives the suit to her assistant, Zac Fisher. Lynette and I have been together for seven years now. For the first time in our relationship, instead of confronting her about it, I simply announce to all our friends that she and I are calling off the engagement.

My fiancé's secretary had my wedding ring remade into a Hello Kitty trinket. When I confronted her, she twisted the truth with shameless arrogance, insisting that my wedding was hers to decide. I turned to my fiancé for support, only to have him dismiss me as petty and unworthy of being his bride. Together, they ridiculed and humiliated me, unaware that their families' power and future all depended on me. When my superior stepped in, their mockery collapsed in the face of truth. My fiancé fell to his knees, begging me to honor our engagement. But I cast him aside without hesitation, breaking off the marriage and leaving him with nothing.